Cut and Run(49)

He looked her over, taking in every detail. “Where are you rushing from?”

She buckled her seat belt. “I just dropped Kat off at the shelter. She showed up at my place last night and ended up spending the night with me.”

As she shifted in her seat, her sweater tightened briefly against her breasts. His heartbeat quickened, and he turned to the road ahead. As he left the parking lot, he said, “I need coffee. You want one?”

“Bless you,” she said. “I would kill for a cup.”

He pulled up to a fast-food drive-through and ordered a couple of coffees.

“Toss in a bagel. Cinnamon raisin, and I’ll love you forever,” she said. “I’m starving.”

He ordered two bagels, refused the money she offered, and paid the clerk at the window. She took the cups, settled them in cupholders, and removed the drink tab on each. There was an odd intimacy in this moment. Sierra had done the same thing a million times.

She sipped her coffee while staring out at the city rushing past.

“How’s Macy?” he asked.

“I spoke to the nurse this morning. She’s hanging in there, which is saying a lot. No quit in her. And the nurse noticed she twitched when spoken to. It may simply be a reflex, but I’d like to think it was deliberate.”

“Might have been. Just because someone’s not awake doesn’t mean they don’t know you’re there,” he said.

“I know,” she said. “And if she’s like me, she’d want me focusing on the case, not her.”

Hayden nodded. “We found a picture on Macy’s phone that keeps coming back to me.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a snapshot of a missing person, Paige Sheldon.”

She frowned. “The pregnant girl who vanished?”

“Yeah. I looked up her case last night. She was five months pregnant. Had an argument with her parents, moved out, and vanished two days later.”

“And you’ve been to Second Chances?” she asked.

“I have. The owner, Danny Garnet, is smooth. He says he doesn’t remember her.”

“Maybe I should show up. My face is sure to spook the right person.”

“Until I know what I’m dealing with and who tried to killed Macy, don’t go Nancy Drew on me. Stay the hell away from Second Chances.”

“I’ve helped solve a few murders.”

“You’ve done it from the autopsy suite and lab. Not on the streets. And this case could end up being very personal for you.”

“We don’t know that.”

He didn’t believe that any more than she did. “Stick to the science, Faith.”

“I’ve never been good at making promises.”

She’d never made demands either. Never pushed. That had been just fine in the beginning, but it bothered him now. He wanted her to rely on him more.

He pressed the accelerator, cutting through the Texas Hill Country roads until he spotted the turnoff to the ranch. “The crew is meeting us out there,” he said.

“Great.”

“You’re off the clock today?” he asked.

“For today. But there will be two days’ work waiting for me tomorrow,” she said. “PJ Slater called me yesterday. He’s found multiple references to a woman named Josie Jones in one of my father’s old datebooks. He thinks Josie might be my birth mother.”

“Does he have any information on her?”

“Not much. She was arrested for shoplifting, and my father defended her in court.” She wrestled with telling him about Kat’s search and decided in for a penny, in for a pound. “Kat and I have been talking a lot lately, and I mentioned Josie to her.”

“Was it really wise to tell her?”

“No, but we were having a moment. I was trying to empathize, and I told her about Josie. She did the search on her own. She not only found another picture of Josie but also a woman on a DNA site who might be my half sister.”

“That kid’s been busy.”

“Maybe too busy. I have to be more careful with her. She’s more fragile than she lets on, and her attaching herself to me and my drama can’t be healthy.”

“I can have our own people look into Josie Jones. The kid might have missed something.”

“It would be interesting to talk to one of Josie’s family members. They must have more information about her.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Faith. You don’t have hard evidence that this woman is your birth mother.”

“Josie vanished thirty-one years ago, Hayden, about nine months before Macy and I were born. Crow sends Macy out to the ranch, and we find what might be graves. And Macy is snapping pictures of another pregnant girl who’s missing. The coincidences are starting to pile up.”

He shifted in his seat.

The sun grew brighter, chasing them as they traveled west toward the house Macy had found in Hill Country. Faith took one last bite of her bagel. Gravel spit out from under his tires as Hayden drove the last fifty feet and parked behind the forensic van.

As they got out, he could see that the recovery team had already unloaded a ground-penetrating radar machine, and two officers appeared to be mapping out their plan of attack on a paper grid.

He introduced Faith to a tall uniformed officer with dark hair and a football lineman’s broad frame. “Dr. McIntyre, I’d like you to meet Officer Lance Pollard. He runs this equipment.”